


Bent, Not Broken

by Nny



Category: Sports Night
Genre: First Kiss, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-07
Updated: 2010-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-05 22:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're weird?" Dana had approached without Casey noticing, almost making him jump out of his skin. "Why are you weird?" She folded her arms and glared up at Casey. "Why is Dan weird? You were supposed to fix that!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bent, Not Broken

Casey waited until Dana had reached his side, waited until she'd taken a breath and opened her mouth before he started to speak.

"Number one, the script is waiting in your inbox. Further to this, 1(a) if you will, yes I _do_ know how to use email I just generally choose _not_ to."

"I taught him," volunteered Jeremy, who'd wandered up to Dana's other side and was rocking back and forth on his heels.

"Number two," said Casey, holding up another finger for clarification, "your hair looks no different to me today than it did yesterday, and you're really better off asking Danny about these things. Which brings us to number three: no, I don't know why Dan's acting weird, in fact I have yet to experience the particular brand of weird that Dan is _acting_ today, but yes, I will make sure he has the script at least outlined before the run down."

Dana, whose mouth had been hanging open throughout his speech, closed it again with a snap. Then she folded her arms with a frown.

"How did you know what I was going to ask?"

"I ran into Natalie in the elevator."

"Natalie was in the elevator?"

"That was where I ran into her," he said agreeably.

"Why was Natalie in the elevator?"

Casey shrugged, figuring he could let Jeremy field this one.

"She said the vending machines on this floor were evil." Jeremy quailed a little when Dana's frown was turned in his direction, shrugging and taking his glasses off to clean them. "That's what she said."

"Any particular reason that only the vending machines on _this_ floor are possessed?" Dana held up a finger as Jeremy opened his mouth, and he obligingly shut it again. "You know what? I don't want to hear it. This conversation will turn into a discussion about whether it's haunting, possession or just a general spiritual crankiness on the part of the vending machines, only it will involve longer words and give me a headache and I don't have _time_ for a headache. Casey, tell Jeremy I don't have time for a headache."

"She doesn't appreciate the finer points of snack food psychology," Casey told Jeremy, who nodded.

"I'm sensing that."

Dana gave one of those faintly disquieting laughs that weren't so much a reaction to anything as a way of avoiding processing the conversation enough _to_ react, and pointed at Casey as she backed away.

"Get into that office right now, mister. Talk, plead, sacrifice to the vending machine gods, do whatever it is you need to do to make sure I have two fully functioning sports anchors on my show tonight. Get it?"

He nodded. "Got it."

She smiled, and he couldn't help but reflect it; she really was a beautiful woman.

"Good. And Jeremy?"

He flinched upright, a passable imitation of standing to attention. "Yessir?"

"Go and fetch your girlfriend from wherever the good vending machines go when they die, okay?"

"Yes, okay, but she's not my -" Jeremy trailed off, finger still upraised, as Dana disappeared down the corridor to her office. Casey raised an eyebrow at him.

"She's not?"

"Well I'm not entirely _sure_."

"Oh, no." Casey turned on his heel and walked towards his office, not even having to look to know that Jeremy was keeping up with him.

"No?"

"Absolutely not and in no way." He turned to face Jeremy, hand on the door of his office, and tried on what he was pretty sure was an understanding smile. "Over to my left, here, we have Kim, who is in fact a woman." Jeremy obligingly turned his head, blushing bright red and essaying an awkward little wave in response to Kim's wink. "To the right, Dave." Dave obligingly raised a hand, although he didn't look away from the football match he was watching. "Dave likes long walks on the beach, improvisational jazz, and has often intimated that 'surprisingly sensitive' ought to be his middle name." Dave's raised hand turned and folded and swore at him in a weirdly graceful single move, and Casey made sure to take note as he reached out and clapped Jeremy on the shoulder. "Either of these fine people would be infinitely more suitable to work out your Natalie issues with, Jeremy. I live in fear of pantslessness."

He spun Jeremy round and gave him an encouraging little push, then ducked inside his office.

"This place is insane," he informed the world plaintively.

"Hey," said the world amicably, "I just work here."

The world apparently spoke in a voice which was weirdly similar to Danny's, and Casey turned to find him perched on the edge of the couch, twirling a pencil between his fingers.

"Hey," he said, walking over to lean against the edge of the table, "you're weird. Why are you weird?"

Both Dan's eyebrows raised, and the pencil stopped twirling for a second.

"As conversation starters go, Case, that one's a little out of left field."

"I have it on reliable authority that you're, and I quote, 'acting weird'."

"Not much of a quote."

"Sources are being remarkably cagey, so I figured I'd go to the -" dammit - "source."

Dan didn't respond, other than to toss him the thesaurus, which Casey placed neatly beside him on the table.

"Is this something I need to worry about?"

"It's nothing." Dan's mouth was tight, drawn down a little at the corners, and his eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the pencil which was spinning again, a little more jerkily.

"Danny, is this something I need to worry about?"

"Casey, I swear it's nothing. Drop it."

"Dan -" he went over to the couch, dropping onto it beside his best friend, then watched bemused as said best friend vaulted instantly to his feet and went over to take his place leaning against the table. "What the hell?"

"Nothing the hell." Dan spread his hands defensively, then tucked the pencil behind his ear. "Seriously, genuinely, nothing the hell. I slept badly, that's all, and you know Dana gets freaked out when I come in early."

"...you came in early?"

"Yeah," and Dan's lips quirked up at one corner, "that's pretty much the expression, man."

Casey sat back on the couch, folding his arms across his chest and regarding Dan narrowly. He was wearing an oversized blue sweatshirt but the sleeves were pushed up to the elbow, a combination which indicated necessary comfort but no real need for security. And he _did_ look tired.

"So you're okay," he pressed, just to make sure, and was actually relieved when Dan rolled his eyes.

"I am one hundred percent A-okay, Casey, my script is done but for the basketball scores -" Dan shifted his weight to his feet and turned for the door - "and I'm going down to the second floor to get some candy."

"The second floor?"

Dan grinned over his shoulder.

"I'm told the vending machines up here are evil."

 

*

 

Apparently it wasn't just the vending machines but the elevators, too, since Casey didn't see Dan again until the run down meeting, tossing a kooshball back and forth with Chris and Will, grinning and joking and looking admirably normal. He presumed that was what the pat on the head from Natalie was for. Most of the meeting was spent splitting his focus between the elaborate doodle with which he was decorating the lower half of the meeting agenda and the small grin on Danny's face, which was a little too fixed to be reassuring.

He raised his head briefly to side with Dave over the correct spelling of Coulthard, but was infinitely more focused on the shading of stick Jeremy's glasses than the meeting until Natalie's strident voice caught his attention.

"- stole my coke and then tried to eat my arm! I'm telling you, Dana, those things are _evil_."

"How did it eat your arm? What was your arm doing in the machine?"

Natalie glared at Elliott, hands planted firmly on hips.

"It _stole_ my _coke_. Were you not paying attention?"

Dana put a hand up, still scribbling notes on her agenda.

"Call Father Maguire." There was a pause as everyone gave her a long look, long enough that she raised her head to stare back at them all, quizzically. "The Exorcist?"

"That was Father Merrick," said Will. She frowned.

"I thought it was Father Maguire."

"It was Father Merrick," said Will, imperturbably.

"So who was Father Maguire?"

"Um, he was from Father Ted," said Jeremy helpfully.

"Father Ted Merrick?"

Natalie rolled her eyes. "Father Ted was that weird Irish programme Jeremy made us watch, Dana, you remember."

"So Father Ted wasn't in the Exorcist."

"It was Father Merrick," Will repeated, and Chris threw the kooshball at the side of his head.

Casey leaned over to Dan, noticing - but choosing not to react to - Dan leaning a little further away.

"I thought it was Karras," he said quietly. Dan shook his head.

"Karras was the young priest, Merrick was the old one."

"There were two priests?" He leaned back in his chair as _everyone_ turned to give him horrified looks. "_What_?"

By the time Elliott and Kim had finished explaining to him exactly what, with tangents into how bare and deprived his life must have been for not knowing, Dan had disappeared again. He checked the restrooms, Dana and Isaac's offices, editing, even considered taking a voyage down to the second floor when Dana said she would feed him to the vending machines if he wandered past her office again. He wasn't sure entirely, though, whether Dan had been eaten by the elevators, so he beat an ignoble retreat back to their office instead to lie in wait.

 

*

 

Somehow he went from lying in wait, to lounging on the couch in wait, to waking up with Dan's hands on his shoulders, shaking him lightly.

"Up and at 'em, champ," Dan told him softly, and Casey blinked up at him. Someone had turned the office lights off while he was asleep and Dan's eyes were black in the dim light, his smile infinitely more genuine than it had been in the meeting. Casey stretched languidly, bracing his feet against the arm of the couch, and returned it with a wide grin of his own. He watched, confused, as Dan blinked a couple of times and then looked away.

"Danny?"

"You know," Dan's voice was low, weirdly intimate in the half-light from the glass doors, "it's really not helpful when you do that."

"When I do what?"

An increase of pressure on his shoulders as Dan levered himself to his feet, pushing both hands into his pockets and hunching his shoulders a little.

"C'mon, Case, we're due in Wardrobe."

"I'm still unclear," he said, swinging his legs to the floor and sprawling against the back of the couch with a yawn, not entirely awake yet, "what it is I'm supposed to have done."

"Exactly as it should be, my friend," said Dan obscurely and walked out, brushing past Natalie who was looming in the doorway menacingly.

"You're due in Wardrobe," she told him, rather less patiently than Dan had.

"I have been made aware of this," he said, rubbing the back of his neck and considering - not for the first time - whether he could get a pillow written off as expenses.

"By Dan?" She cocked her head to one side curiously.

"By Dan."

"That's more than he's said to anyone else today. He's -"

"- acting weird," finished Casey. "Yeah, I know."

"So fix it," she told him menacingly, "and get to Wardrobe. I have maintenance guys to abuse."

"- and he's not the only one," he continued, although he made sure to wait until she was definitely out of earshot.

 

*

 

In Wardrobe and right through Makeup, Dan was acting almost exactly like normal; Casey was starting to worry that his judgement of these things might not be the most reliable, though, since neither of them bat an eyelid when they made their way to the studio and passed Will in a deerstalker being closely followed by Natalie, who was clutching two inflatable baseball bats duct-taped into the shape of a cross. Jeremy was leaning against the wall a few feet behind them, head in his hands, and Casey reached out to pat him consolingly on the shoulder. He regretted it almost immediately.

"Smote!" Jeremy yelled, flailing, eyes wide behind thick glasses. "With lightning!"

He withdrew his hand quickly and hurried to catch up to Dan, who gave him a sidelong look.

"And _I'm_ weird?"

He shrugged. "That's what they tell me."

"You're weird?" Dana had approached without Casey noticing, almost making him jump out of his skin. "Why are you weird?" She folded her arms and glared up at Casey. "Why is Dan weird? You were supposed to fix that!"

"I _did_ fix it!"

Dan's eyes flicked between them both, his mouth turning down a little at the corner again. Casey hated it when it did that.

"Fixed what?"

"Never mind," he said.

"Fixed _you_," Dana answered at almost exactly the same moment, and Casey gave her a betrayed look.

"Fixed me." Dan's face went kind of stiff, his eyes looking shuttered. "I wasn't aware I was broken."

"Not broken," Casey said, still scowling at Dana for a second before he turned to Dan. "Not _broken_, Danny, just a little… bent."

It took him a second or two before he worked out what Dan's blush was about, why Dana's eyebrow was halfway up her forehead and why one of the cameramen was leaning against the set in silent hysterics. He groaned and covered his face with his hands, accepting the swat on his arm as his due.

"I'm just going to sit down at the desk and be quiet for a while, okay?"

"Might be wise, partner," and Dan's voice was a little choked but not overly angry, which he decided to count as a win.

"Seriously, though," he ventured a little while later, since he was clinically proven to be incapable of silence for more than a few minutes at a time, "what is with you today?"

"Nothing is with me, Casey. Drop it." His eyes kept flicking over to the camera guy, who was double checking leads with a lopsided smirk on his face.

"Ninety seconds, everybody." Dana's disembodied voice floated over the PA, and Casey grabbed his earpiece and stared at the side of Dan's face.

"Something is definitely with you."

Dan let out an impatient huff of breath as Alison fussed with his mic.

"You really don't want to ask that. Trust me, man."

"Look, Danny, just tell me."

Dan looked his way, hooking his own earpiece over his ear, then looked back over at the camera guy, still fussing with a duster.

"I don't want to tell you."

Casey leaned toward Dan, lowering his voice; it was kind of instinctual, despite the fact that they were both wearing their mics and the control room could hear every word.

"You know you can tell me anything, right?"

"Okay. Fine." Dan let out a breath and picked up his script, shuffling it into alignment and banging it against the desk a couple times for good measure. "We're dating."

"...we're dating." Casey just stared at the side of Dan's face. "We're _dating_?"

"See, this is why I didn't want to tell you. I knew you'd get weird."

"I like weird," Casey replied, mouth on autopilot. "Weird's a good look for me."

"Not as much as you'd think," Dan answered, watching with narrowed eyes as the cameraman went over to claim money from one of the sound guys.

"Thirty seconds."

"Later," said Casey, shuffling his own script into order. "Later you are telling me everything."

"Later," said Dan, then turned to grin at the camera. "Good evening from New York City, everybody. I'm Dan Rydell, alongside Casey McCall, and we have all those stories and more coming up after this. You're watching Sports Night on CSC, so stick around."

 

*

 

"Kelly, we're on you in five, four, three, two, one. Five minutes back, everybody."

Casey unclipped his microphone, even before pulling off his earpiece, then leaned across the desk to yank Dan's off, too.

"Now you talk," he said, voice low and menacing, and Dan flipped through the pages of his script with a smirk.

"This is a world war two movie, now?"

"Ve haff vays," and when Dan gave him a skeptical sidelong look Casey lowered his voice still further. "Tell me or I'm telling Dana what you _really_ think about her new haircut."

Dan raised an eyebrow. "I _like_ Dana's new haircut."

"You know that and I know that, my friend, but does _Dana_ know that?"

"... you are a small and evil man."

Casey preened.

"It's seriously nothing, I swear." Dan had his pencil spinning between his fingers again, and Casey was starting to think that that wasn't a good sign. "There's this woman who's been after me, is all, and I figured it was just easier to tell her that I was seeing someone."

"And you chose _me_?"

"Yours was the first name that came into my head!" Dan's look was aggravatingly miserable, and Casey was pretty sure that one way or the other he was going to end up forgiving him way too easily for this. "She kinda put me on the spot, I needed an excuse to say no."

"So what's wrong with her? How come you need an excuse?"

Dan fiddled with the collar of his shirt, then smoothed his tie fussily.

"She's... moderately batshit," he eventually answered, and Casey snorted.

"Moderately?"

"More than moderately. Persistent, too."

"So you told her you were dating _me_."

"It's okay, man, I swear." Danny was looking earnest, now, leaning across the desk towards him. "She works at my therapist's, she's not going to tell anyone."

"...I hadn't even thought about that," Casey answered, shaking his head slightly. "Seriously, Danny, I'm still stuck on the fact that mine was the first name you thought of."

"Stuck on it, huh?"

"Can't get past it."

"That'd be all the hot man loving," Danny said wisely. "It blows the mental fuses."

Casey shot him a look, his mouth twitching irresistibly at the corners.

"It's hot?"

"Oh trust me, it's hot."

"You're sure it's hot?"

"Oh it is _very_ hot."

"...with _you_?"

"...keep this up and I'm making you impotent."

Casey laughed, leaning back to let Alison clip his mic on again, hooking his earpiece back over his ear.

"You know that's not gonna get rid of her, right?"

"I'm nursing you through it."

"What are you nursing him through, Dan?" Natalie's voice came over his earpiece, a little too loud like always. Casey grinned and slouched back in his chair.

"My impossible crush on you, Natalie. I really thought we had something, there, but Jeremy's your boyfriend now, right?"

There was a small squeak from Jeremy, and Natalie's voice was distinctly suspicious.

"_Yes_, he's my boyfriend. Where've you heard different?"

"Oh, Jeremy just didn't seem sure, is all," and he couldn't help laughing when he heard the distinct sound of an arm punch over the earpiece.

"You are _so_ my boyfriend," Natalie told Jeremy firmly in the background.

"Thirty seconds back, people," Dana said longsufferingly.

"What was that about?"

Casey directed his grin at Dan, pushing himself into a more upright position.

"Oh, just doing my bit for humanity. I think it's generally better when both parties know they're dating, don't you?"

Dan's eyes widened a little, then he turned to look in the direction of the control room.

"Dana, you know I love your new haircut, right?"

 

*

 

It wasn't until they were both back in Wardrobe that Casey got a chance to pester him about it again.

"Seriously, the first name you thought of?"

Dan's back was turned to him as he unbuttoned his shirt, and Casey noticed with interest how his shoulders tightened.

"Casey, you want to leave this alone."

"Actually, you know what? I don't think I do." He left off his own shirt, leaving it still halfway buttoned, his tie loose around his neck, and took a couple of steps closer to Dan. "Because this doesn't warrant you acting weird all day, Danny, and I want to know what does." He put his hand on Dan's shoulder, muscles tense against his fingers. "And I want to know why, when someone asks you who you're dating, mine's the first name that comes to mind."

Dan spun around, one hand firm in the center of Casey's chest.

"_This_ is why, okay?" he said, voice barely controlled as he pushed Casey until his back hit the wall, leaned close enough that he could feel Dan's quickened breathing against his cheek. "This is why."

And then his mouth, thin-lipped and fever hot, was pressed against Casey's, hand still pressed tight enough to his chest that Casey was pretty sure he could feel how fast his heart was beating, could feel the vibrations of the small noise he couldn't do anything to swallow back. And it was just - for a few seconds there, it was _perfect_. Right until Dan pulled back, pulled in on himself, got the same shuttered look in his eyes as he had earlier.

"Huh," said Casey, a small breathless noise, and he reached out to touch Dan's face, his thumb tracing the edge of his slow-forming smile as he pulled him back in.

He was pretty sure this was the most sense anyone had made all day.


End file.
